Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield (book) -- I give up

I do a bit of book reviewing here and there on the net. A long time ago I made the decision to avoid criticising books for stylistic choices made by the author. The idea here is that the way a writer's style affects a reader is so subjective that it would be unfair to negatively characterise a book simply because it rubbed one reader the wrong way—it may be that other readers are captivated by the story and are not affected at all by the writer's style.

If you've read my last few posts on Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield, you may have picked up on the fact that the author's style rubbed me the wrong way. I am going to stop writing about the book because I know I won't be able to do so fairly: Greenfield may have written the greatest story ever, but I wouldn't be able to tell because the way he writes drives me insane.

So I'm moving on to something that will undoubtedly bring joy and sunshine into my life and yours: the Rolling Stones' 1972 classic Goats Head Soup, sure to be pure aural magic from beginning ("Dancing with Mr. D") to end ("Starfucker").

Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield pp 13-15

Exile on Main Street: a season in hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield (prologue)

• p. 13:
  
  
  

  The Players
  Keith Richards: He is our hero. He is also our antihero. In itself, this is entirely postmodern. But then in many ways, so is Keith. In this particular rock 'n' roll passion play, he is our Jesus of Cool.
  
  ...
  
  Why is Keith so cool? To put it plainly, the man simply does not give a shit. All things that matter most to all the faceless, colorless individuals who control the world outside of rock 'n' roll are of no concern to him.

  
  Jesus Christ. Show, don't tell.
  
  
• p. 14: Did you know that Keith has no time for crap? That he does not care about details? That money means nothing to him except when he wants to spend more of it? It's true, man. That's what the author tells us, using those exact words. This is not a book that relies much on subtlety for characterisation.
  
  
• p. 15: "By the time Keith comes to live at Nellcôte, he has already long since left behind bourgeois values." Aaarrrggh. The author did not just write those words. I refuse to believe it.
  
  
• p. 15: "Always, the man [Keith] marches to the beat of a different drummer, one whose name does not necessarily happen to be Charlie Watts." Author Greenfield is never one to miss a chance to savage a cliché. Goddamn this book is going to be torture.
  

Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield pp 4-12

Exile on Main Street: a season in hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield (prologue)

• pp. 4-10:
  

  Welcome to Villa Nellcote. You do know how to get there, right? From Nice, take either the Grand Corniche, the twisting, turning high road built by Napoleon to follow the ancient Roman route along the jagged coast of the French Riviera, or the Moyenne Corniche, the twisting, turning middle road from which Princess Grace of Monaco plunged to her death in 1982, or more conveniently, the always crowded Basse Corniche, which runs at sea level right beside the sparkling blue Mediterranean.

  The author is setting the scene. That is the opening paragraph of an interminable physical description of Villa Nellcôte, the house where the Stones recorded the bulk of Exile, and the setting of the book under discussion. I know what you're thinking: "It's just a house, why should the author spend 6 pages describing not only its layout, but driving directions to the house?" Why indeed.
  
  
• p. 10: An entire page discussing various rumours about the landlord of Villa Nellcôte. Scintillating stuff.
  
  
• p. 10-12: It was rumoured (by one of the Stones' hangers on) that the landlord had lived with a Nazi at Nellcôte during the War, and that his stolen art still graced the house. This tawdry bit of gossip, unsupported bu any evidence whatsoever, allows the author to clumsily foreshadow how things will fall apart for the Stones because 30 years earlier some woman shacked up at Villa Nellcôte with some Nazi functionary.
  
  

Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield (prologue)

Exile on Main Street: a season in hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield (prologue)
Pages 1-4

• An inauspicious start:
  
  
  

  In the short space of ten months... three of the greatest individual talents ever to grace a rock 'n' roll stage ended their lives with drugs before their twenty-eighth birthdays. That rock itself did not die seems even now like a miracle....

  The three of the greatest individual talents ever to grace a rock 'n' roll stage? Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison.
  
  Wait, what?
  
  Look, I don't want to shit over anybody's faves. But can we be honest here? Of those three, the only one who had a meaningful, lasting effect on rock and roll was Hendrix. That the author thinks that the death of Joplin and Morrison could have spelled the end of rock and roll music itself does not bode well for his historical perspective.
  
  
  
• Greenfield sets the scene: it is 1970 and the world is reeling from the death of Janis Joplin, the generational divide, Kent State. "Something that had been very much alive was in fact now dying. To be replaced by what, no one seemed to know." Ominous. "As always, you could blame it on the Stones." What?
  
  
  

  Two years earlier, Brian Jones, who always liked to refer to himself as "the undisputed leader of the Rolling Stones," had become the first great rock star of his era to die — by drowning under mysterious circumstances in his own swimming pool.

  As sad as it may have been, I get the feeling the author is placing slightly more importance on the deaths of Jones and Janis Joplin (really? Joplin?) than is warranted.
  
  Also, Altamont was another sign the world was ending.
  
  
• Okay, I get it now. The author wants to paint a picture of rock stars turning to drug use for escape or something. In addition to the weltanschauung-changing death of Janis Joplin, the members of Cream had all begun to use heroin in worrisome amounts.
  
  
  

  In a world no one under the age of thirty had made, where everything seemed so fucked up as to be far beyond repair, numbing yourself to the pain of just having to wake up every morning to begin yet another hopeless day seemed to make eminent sense.

Three pages of this is all I can stand for now. More tomorrow.

Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield (book)

I'm trying something a little different now. Having made my way through the glorious sprawl of Exile on Main St., I will now make my way through the likely less-than-glorious book Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield. I picked the book up a few weeks ago on a whim – I since have avoided reading any reviews or even any descriptions of the book besides its back cover blurbs to avoid colouring my impressions. (I get the feeling I'm going to enjoy the experience of reading this thing somewhat less than I enjoyed listening to the album of the same title.)

Here are some Google Books details to whet your appetite:

Recorded during the blazing summer of 1971 at Villa Nellcote, Keith Richards’ seaside mansion in the south of France, Exile on Main St. has been hailed as one of the Rolling Stones’ best albums-and one of the greatest rock records of all time. Yet its improbable creation was difficult, torturous...and at times nothing short of dangerous.In self-imposed exile, the Stones-along with wives, girlfriends, and a crew of hangers-on unrivaled in the history of rock-spent their days smoking, snorting, and drinking whatever they could get their hands on. At night, the band descended like miners into the villa’s dank basement to lay down tracks. Out of those grueling sessions came the familiar riffs and rhythms of “Rocks Off,” “Tumbling Dice,” “Happy,” and “Sweet Virginia.”All the while, a variety of celebrities-John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Gram Parsons among them-stumbled through the villa’s neverending party, as did the local drug dealers, known to one and all as “les cowboys.” Villa Nellcote became the crucible in which creative strife, outsize egos, and all the usual byproducts of the Stones’ legendary hedonistic excess fused into something potent, volatile, and enduring.Here, for the first time, is the season in hell that produced Exile on Main St.

More details

Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones

By Robert Greenfield

Published by Da Capo Press, 2006

ISBN 0306814331, 9780306814334

258 pages

Exile on Main St. Roundup

Exile on Main St. Roundup

Side one
1. "Rocks Off" – 4:32
2. "Rip This Joint" – 2:23
3. "Shake Your Hips" (Slim Harpo) – 2:59
4. "Casino Boogie" – 3:33
5. "Tumbling Dice" – 3:45

Side two
1. "Sweet Virginia" – 4:25
2. "Torn and Frayed" – 4:17
3. "Sweet Black Angel" – 2:54
4. "Loving Cup" – 4:23

Side three
1. "Happy" – 3:04
2. "Turd on the Run" – 2:37
3. "Ventilator Blues" (Jagger, Richards, Mick Taylor) – 3:24
4. "I Just Want to See His Face" – 2:52
5. "Let It Loose" – 5:17

Side four
1. "All Down the Line" – 3:49
2. "Stop Breaking Down" (Robert Johnson) – 4:34
3. "Shine a Light" – 4:14
4. "Soul Survivor" – 3:49

I usually provide some kind of background details on these album roundups, but I won't do so here – I am about to begin blogging a book written about the recording of Exile, which will no doubt provide me with the opportunity to share many choice nuggets. So stay tuned – I'm not done with this album yet.

Soul Survivor

Exile on Main St.
Side Four, Track Three
"Soul Survivor" – 3:49



[Download link]

... and Exile ends with a whimper instead of a bang. On an album where the Stones took all kinds of chances, experimented with abandon in ways we'd never see again, "Soul Survivor" clocks in as the most generic track the band had recorded until this point. Not a bad track, but it sounds exactly like something that could pop up on Steel Wheels or an ipod advertisement 30 years later.

Shine a Light

Exile on Main St.
Side Four, Track Three
"Shine a Light" – 4:14



[Download link]

I've always heard "Shine a Light" as a fairly typical example of a soul-inflected ballad, no more musically interesting than, say, "Let It Be" or "Take It to the Limit". I never really understood the amount of attention the song attracted—compared to most of the tracks on Exile or any of the ballads on Sticky Fingers, "Shine a Light" is unremarkable.

There is a lot of confusion over who played what on this track. I was going to do some research to clear that up, but it's just not worth it for this vanilla track. I can say that Billy Preston is the man on the B3 (moonlighting from his gig at the time over at Abbey Road Studios), and who was perhaps asked to use his extensive gospel background to help arrange the song.

Stop Breaking Down

Exile on Main St.
Side Four, Track Two
"Stop Breaking Down" (Robert Johnson) – 4:34



[Download link]

I read Greil Marcus's Mystery Train at an impressionable age. You all know the book, I won't recap it for you. One of the things Marcus did was turn me off blues music performed by white people. He didn't do this intentionally—much of Mystery Train discusses how Randy Newman, The Band, and especially Elvis incorporated blues into their best work. But by doing so he highlighted the fact that the best work by these artist incorporated blues, changed it, used it to create something entirely new.

I've talked here about the many limp Stones attempts at blues. I've mostly framed my comments within the "what is gained by having the Stones perform 'I Can't Be Satisfied' when I can just as easily hear Muddy Waters play it?" argument. Typing this up, I was going to address the "cultural theft" issue, but it's not even necessary—there is simply no value-added by a Stones blues shuffle when so many performances by authentic blues giants are easily available. It's like hearing about a new John Mellencamp album—do we really need this?

It seems that by Let It Bleed the Stones started thinking the same way. Or at least that's how it appears. They started taking fewer passes at traditional-style blues and more attempts at incorporating the blues to create something new: they did blues-as-rock, blues-as-country, and blues-as-opera. On "Stop Breaking Down", they reach back to some real deep blues roots—it doesn't get much deeper than Robert Johnson—and just rock the shit out of it. In spite of what I said in my last post, this song truly captures the sprawl, the reach, the ambition of Exile.

I'll leave the last word for Greil Marcus, who ruined so many Led Zeppelin songs for me, placing "Stop Breaking Down" at the number one spot in his top 5 Robert Johnson songs performed by rock artists.

This was the fifth straight LP on which the Stones included a country blues, but the first album on which they approached country blues as rock 'n' roll—perhaps because in sound and spirit the rest of the album approached rock 'n' roll as country blues. Exile was a nice tour of morgues, courthouses, sinking ships, claustrophobic rooms, deserted highways; the whole album was a breakdown, one long night of fear. Johnson's hottest bragging song gave the Stones a chance to blow the fear away. With Mick squeaking his harp, calling for chorus after chorus, this stands as one of the Stones' best.

---

It occurred to me that I hadn't listed to Robert Johnson's original in some time. Here it is. Stuff I got'll bust your brains out, baby, it'll make you lose your mind. That's some good bragging music right there.

All Down the Line

Exile on Main St.
Side Four, Track One
"All Down the Line" – 3:49



[Download link]

Side four now, coming down the stretch. "All Down the Line" has a little pinch of everything that made the Stones great during this era: one of Keith's great open-G intros, a terrific Jagger performance, a tight rhythm section. There's some great slide work from Mick Taylor, neat horn charts, a singalong chorus. The Stones did all of these things better in other songs, but never brought them all together like they did here.

I'd forgotten how much I loved this song. It rivals "Brown Sugar" in dance floor potential, it rocks harder than "Bitch". "All Down the Line" is a party in a can.


Ahh, the seventies. That Mick Taylor could really play, couldn't he?

Let It Loose

Exile on Main St.
Side Three, Track Five
"Let It Loose" – 5:17



[Download link]

The Mick Voice has finally arrived. We have heard traces of it before, but I believe "Let It Loose" represents the first blossoming of this glorious flower. I previously described The Mick Voice as "jaw sticking out, severe underbite, slurring words all over the place — think of the first line of 'Angie'" and if this doesn't meet that description, nothing does.



There's nothing really interesting about this track apart from Mick. It is the most boring song on the album, and even Dr. John, who sat in on piano, can't distinguish this trifle.

I Just Want to See His Face

Exile on Main St.
Side Three, Track Four
"I Just Want to See His Face" – 2:52



[Download link]

Jagger on the song in 1992:

"I Just Want to See His Face" was a jam with Charlie and Mick Taylor. I don't know who's playing keyboards, maybe I am. I don't even know what album it was on. That was on Exile? I think it was just a trio originally, though other people might have been added eventually. It was a complete jam. I just made the song up there and then over the riff that Charlie and Mick were playing. That's how I remember it, anyway. I'd forgotten about that one.
...
I'm just playing the Doubting Thomas. I don't think it's a particularly rare idea.

An obvious studio jam, repeating the V-IV-I chords changes endlessly. A straight up gospel number. "You don't want to walk and talk about Jesus, you just wanna see His face." Some wacky percussion buried in the mix, and a couple (at least!) of overdubbed basses. No guitars. A strange little number. Right up Tom Waits's alley:

...that song had a big impact on me, particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, 'I've got to learn how to do that.'

That's two Waits references in a row. Hmm... I got an idea for a new blog!

Ventilator Blues

Exile on Main St.
Side Three, Track Three
"Ventilator Blues" (Jagger, Richards, Mick Taylor) – 3:24




[Download link]

Hey, Mick Taylor gets a writing credit! Bet he was happy about that, eh?

Wikipedia:

"Ventilator Blues" marks the first and only time guitarist Mick Taylor would be given credit alongside regular Stones scribes Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. While his exact amount of input is unknown, Taylor's contribution of the song's opening slide riff is considered the main reason he was given the credit, as it drives the song.

"Lumbering" is I guess the word you'd use to describe the song. The jerky rhythm always sounded like one of Tom Waits's existential blues recordings from Bone Machine.

There really isn't anything notable about the song apart from Jagger, who is in full Mick Jagger mode, double-tracked for even more Jaggery goodness.

Turd on the Run

Exile on Main St.
Side Three, Track Two
"Turd on the Run" – 2:37




[Download link]

Grabbed hold of your coat tail but it come off in my hand
I reached for your lapel but it weren't sewn on so grand
Begged, promised anything if only you would stay
Well I lost a lot of love over you

Well, the song sounds like shit. Can we agree on that? This is the type of production/mixing clusterfuck that would keep Mick bitching years later.

Fell down to my knees and I hung on to your pants
But you just kept on running while they ripped off in my hands
Diamond ring, vaseline, you give me disease
Well I lost a lot of love over you

A double-time blues boogie, the kind of thing ZZ Top could milk for an entire album. We expect more from The Stones, though. Some nice harp work from Mick doesn't make up for the unfinished feel of the composition.

I boogied in the ballroom, I boogied in the dark
Tie your hands, tie your feet, throw you to the shark
Make you sweat, make you scream, make you wish you'd never been
I lost a lot of love over you

That verse always reminded me of the version of "Reelin' and Rockin'" that Chuck Berry performed on American Hot Wax:

We boogied in the kitchen
We boogied in the hall
I boogied on my finger
and wiped it on the wall

That's the verse they always censor. Here is that performance, with that risqué part removed.

Happy

Exile on Main St.
Side Three, Track One
"Happy" – 4:23



[Save link]

Keith steps out into the spotlight here, due probably to Mick's missingness at the "studio" in France. I'll probably have to make a separate post just to discuss the shenanigans at Nellcote, so look for that. "Happy" is another one of those songs that nobody seems to like except me. It is a total mess, mix-wise, even worse than most of this album, but Keith's rhythm guitar is always right out there in front, and that is enough to get a pass from me.

Loving Cup

Exile on Main St.
Side Two, Track Four
"Loving Cup" – 4:23



[Save link]

A little bit of trivia: of the first nine songs on Exile, four of them start their verses on chords other than the tonic. "Rocks Off" and "Sweet Virginia" start on the IV, "Torn and Frayed" and "Loving Cup" being the verse on the V. Unusual, if not particularly notable. Can you sense that I have nothing to say about this track?

Here's a clip of the Stones playing the song around the time of its release. The performance is not particularly notable, but Keith is wearing one of the greatest belts I have ever seen. Even Vinnie Pazienza would have been embarrassed to wear that thing into the ring.



Another piece of trivia: this is the third Youtube clip I have posted where Keith has forgotten to bring a guitar strap to a television taping. What's that all about?

Sweet Black Angel

Exile on Main St.
Side Two, Track Three
"Sweet Black Angel" – 2:54



[Save link]

I am going to put forward the proposition that "Sweet Black Angel" was the only good political song Mick Jagger ever had a hand in. Except for "Street Fighting Man". That was a good one, too. I guess "Gimme Shelter" counts as well. But that's it: "Sweet Black Angel" was one of only three good political songs that Mick Jagger could claim any credit for. Every other time he ventured into this arena he wound up embarrassing himself: "Undercover Of The Night" is shit, "Let's Work" is ridiculous, and we don't even have to discuss "Sweet Neo Con".

The Sweet Black Angel, if you're not familiar, was Angela Davis, a political activist and possessor of one of the great Afros of all time who was then facing a murder charge in association with a Black Panthers-related shootout (see Associated Press report of the incident – she was later acquitted). Davis was on trial during the recording of Exile, but who knows what prompted Mick to take a stand on this issue, penning some of his better lyrics:

Well, she ain't no singer, she ain't no star,
But she sure talk good and she move so fast.
But the gal in danger, yeah, the gal in chains,
But she keep on pushing
Would you take her place?
She counting up the minutes, she counting up the days,
She's a sweet black angel, not a sweet black slave.

More on Angela Davis here.

Torn and Frayed

Exile on Main St.
Side Two, Track Two
"Torn and Frayed" – 4:17



[Save link]

Well the ballrooms and smelly bordellos
and dressing rooms filled with parasites.
On stage the band has got problems,
they're a bag of nerves on first nights.

Rock and roll autobiographies come in all kinds. There's the tediously frank Lennon style ("Ballad of John and Yoko", "Mother"), the comic bragging style perfected by Springsteen ("Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out", "Growing Up"). You have the sepia-toned nostalgia of Van Morrison's "Cleaning Windows", the egomaniacally specific "Solsbury Hill", and the whatever-it-is of "Nutbush City Limits". Wikipedia has a long list of these type of songs. The Stones check in with "Torn and Frayed", ostensibly about the wearying life of a band who is not the Stones on the road.

Joe's got a cough, sounds kind a rough.
Yeah, and the codeine to fix it.
Doctor prescribes drug store supplies
Who's gonna help him to kick it?

The recording itself is a sloppy mess of a mix, sloppier even given the sloppy standards of Exile. This has been the subject of some complaints, notably Mick, Jagger who has been vocal in his remarks. I'll address his comments in a future post. Me, I don't mind the mix at all. I said it before, but Exile's greatest virtue is the scope of its ambition, and it almost seems to me that the band wanted to follow these ambitions without having to worry about little things like getting a good sound on the bass or recording the high hat properly.

Well his coat is torn and frayed.
It`s seen much better days.
Just as long as the guitar plays
let it steal your heart away.

It is well known that Mick was getting a little fed up with the rampant drug use within and around the band. Here, at least, he used that frustration to good use, coming up with some of his best lyrics on the album.

Sweet Virginia

Exile on Main St.
Side Two, Track One
"Sweet Virginia" – 4:25



[Save link]

Thank you for your wine, California
Thank you for your sweet and bitter fruit
Yes I got the desert in my toe nail
And I hid the speed inside my shoe

Some of the best lyrics Mick ever had a hand in. Musically, "Sweet Virginia" is sort of the sequel to "Love in Vain", although Charlie Watts and Bobby Keys show up to give the song a more rocking backbone. One of the things I noticed here that could be applied to any number of songs from this era: the Stones had a way of sounding incredibly sloppy but actually playing very precisely. Much of the charm of this song is hearing Charlie ramble around the kit seemingly aimlessly and Mick slur his lyrics incoherently, as if half asleep.

Tumbling Dice

Exile on Main St.
Side One, Track Five
"Tumbling Dice" – 3:45




[Save link]

"Tumbling Dice" evolved from an earlier unreleased Stones track called "Good Time Women", which has the same chord changes but a completely different melody:



The recording of "Tumbling Dice" proper took place in four different studios over three years, beginning at Stargroves during the Sticky Fingers sessions. There are at least three different bass tracks, uncountable guitar overdubs, and five different singers overdubbing who knows how many parts. The whole thing is a mess, a glorious, glorious mess.

The key, I think, is the rhythm section. Watts and Wyman (and Taylor on one of the bass overdubs) lock down the laid back midtempo grove, give it strength and direction, and while those sloppy guitars and vocal tracks meander aimlessly, the rhythm section is there to anchor the whole thing, keep it from drifting too far.